Each week during the 2017-18 season, Craig Meyer, the Post-Gazette’s Pitt basketball writer, will answer fan and reader questions about the Panthers. And some other stuff, too.
If you want to submit a question, you can email Craig at cmeyer@post-gazette.com or hit him up on Twitter @CraigMeyerPG.
Do you think we will see Carr play more minutes off the ball to take advantage of his scoring ability a little bit more? With teams utilizing different pressure looks there have been times where he has focused less on scoring and more on beating pressure and distributing.
— Jason (@JSunDoubleU) December 28, 2017
Craig: It’s certainly possible, though I don’t know how much it necessarily matters in a motion offense like Stallings’ unless, as you mentioned, they’re playing a pressing team. In those situations this season, Carr has often seemed flustered and has been forced into an inordinate number of turnovers. The game where Pitt fared the best against a press, in the loss to West Virginia, Ryan Luther, given his experience and poise, was a focal point in the team’s press-breaking strategy.
Without Carr at the point, it basically requires that Jonathan Milligan also be on the court, as Pitt doesn’t really have any reliable and effective ball-handlers beyond those two. The argument in favor of Carr and Milligan playing together is a pretty strong one. Lineups featuring Carr and Milligan have a collective plus-minus of 61 this season. All other Pitt lineups have a plus-minus of minus-46. Granted, those Milligan-Carr lineups got their heaviest use in a four-game stretch in which the Panthers played Lehigh, High Point, Duquesne and Mount St. Mary’s, but it’s a noteworthy difference, nonetheless.
While Carr has been impressive from a scoring standpoint — averaging nearly 12 points per game while shooting 48.7 percent from 3-point range — I think it does him and the team a disservice to try to limit his abilities as a ball-handler and playmaker. His turnover numbers are bad even for a freshman, at 3.1 per game, but his assist rate ranks him among the top 70 players nationally. Simply put, he makes teammates around him better when he’s on the court and the team is often better offensively when he’s out there as a creator.
Why is Stallings recruiting five-stars? Seems like a waste of time. Also, recruiting Ohio seems like a waste of time. Referring to Alonzo Gaffney - the player he went to see last night.
— John Enright (@johnenright46) December 22, 2017
Craig: As a coach at an ACC school, I feel like you have to at least try to lure a five-star player. Both Pitt and Stallings have shown the capability in the past to do as much — the former with Steven Adams, Khem Birch and Dante Taylor, and the latter with John Jenkins. You never know what kind of a pitch or what about your school or program may stick with a prospect, but I agree that a school like Pitt has to be very careful and deliberate in deciding which top-tier recruits to pursue. There’s not much sense in that kind of program devoting so much of their time and energy to players who they have virtually no chance at landing.
As for recruiting in Ohio, it makes enough sense. The eastern part of the state borders Western Pennsylvania and while it could be classified as Big Ten country, but you never know if someone from that region dreams of playing in the ACC. Is that the best geographical niche for Pitt to target in its overall recruiting strategy? Maybe not, especially since it seems like a nice Canadian pipeline could potentially be in the works with the success of Carr and Shamiel Stevenson. Still, though, it’s worth a shot.
Could Pitt be better off redshirting Ryan Luther this year to improve next year's outlook and do you think Pitt will make that attempt?
— Jeff Hauser (@jdoogie1) December 22, 2017
Craig: We got the chance to ask Stallings about this yesterday and he said they won’t be pursuing a medical redshirt for Luther. He has played in 10 games thus far and with Pitt likely playing 32 games this season, that surpasses the 30-percent-of-games-played threshold the NCAA has in place for medical redshirts (Luther is at 31.25 percent, though if you multiply 32 by 0.3, it’s 9.6; no word on whether the NCAA rounds up).
It also comes down to a question of whether it’s worth it to shelve a player for three months for an injury that may only require him to miss two weeks. And, perhaps more important, whether that player would even want to undergo such an exaggerated process, especially given what an excellent season he was having.
Do the pitt players actually get along as well as it seems like they do? They seem to enjoy playing together and jointly realize how special it will be when they turn it around
— Barry J (@BarryJ23) December 28, 2017
Craig: That’s certainly the impression I get, largely from watching their interactions in warmups, practices and games, as well as their public comments. We only get so much time around the players, and often do so in very controlled settings, so it’s not as if we’re spending time with them in their dorm rooms and seeing how they interact regularly. But unlike last season, when the team was fairly splintered, this seems like a group of players that genuinely likes being around and playing with one another.
Would your rather fight a TJ McConnell-sized Embiid or an Embiid-sized TJ?
— Corey Cohen (@CoreyECohen) December 29, 2017
Craig: I’ll gladly take a McConnell-sized Embiid. T.J. McConnell and I are both 6-foot-2, so I’d at the very least get to go toe-to-toe with someone who’s actually my size. Even though said person is a professional athlete, I at least have more of a chance. If McConnell were 7 feet tall like Joel Embiid, I would suddenly have to contend with someone gritty, scrappy and whatever other adjectives we use for short, white players, and now that person is suddenly given the physical frame of a polar bear. No thanks.
Plus, while I love Embiid and his excellent trash-talk/troll game, I wonder how much of the intimidation factor with him comes from the fact he’s just really tall. I feel like one day, he’s going to try someone in the league who really shouldn’t be trifled with. And by “someone in the league who really shouldn’t be trifled with,” I mean Zach Randolph.
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG
First Published: December 29, 2017, 5:37 p.m.
